From: Emmental, Bessarabia
3 April 1922
Worthy Staats-Anzeiger!
It seems like we have reached our target. I have often wanted to give up reporting because I had not received any editions of the paper. I had planned on writing to you to ask you to send the paper to my brother in Canada, but to my greatest joy I received 5 editions recently. Perhaps it will now be better again and it is high time, because I am totally unhappy with this doing. I just can’t be without the paper.
In the last edition of the paper, I read an article by Mr. R. F. Gutsche in Hazen, Mercer County, ND. He encourages us people from Bessarabia to write more often. Well dear Mr. Gutsche, at the beginning of winter there were certainly not just a few reports from Bessarabia, but since we didn’t get the paper regularly we became disgusted with writing.
The weather is just like we want it to be. The green seedlings are coming up. The pasture is very nice, but the grass is still too short in order to satisfy the cattle. Right now it rains once again. As soon as we get nice warm weather, we will have enough pasture for the cattle in a matter of a few days. We are very hopeful to have a good harvest this year. Fruit and wine promise to turn out very well. There will be “Feierspritzen” again. That’s how Mr. Hobbacher expressed himself in Edition #66.
Now I want to report something about the present Emmental, which perhaps might be of interest to the people of Emmental living in the New World. There are not just a few over there. There are 106 families living in the village of Emmental. All are members of the Catholic Church. There is a small prayer house and a parsonage. Father Fuchs takes care of the parish. Furthermore, we have one school, which was handed over to the “Senftwo” (unknown to the translator). There are two teachers at the school, one teacher from “Semski” and one private teacher. Then there is the local mayor’s office with its’ four villages to take care of. The villages are Konvin, Kostantinofka, Zarofka and Bikus. A secretary and his helper work in that office. Peter Gross is the mayor. We also have a steam-operated mill in the village, two oil mills and a brick factory, which is closed due to lack of fuel. We have a private grocery store, a community grocery store, 3 forges, 5 shoemakers, 1 carpenter, 1 wagon builder, 1 barrel maker and several dozen hunters with greyhounds. Furthermore, we have 172 horses, 1 community stud, 350 head of cattle, 2 community bulls, which are very skinny due to the lack of fodder, 280 sheep and 1261 dessjatin (1 dessjatin = 2.5 acres) of our own land and 450 dessjatin private land, which will be divided among the people without land. All these are our riches in Emmental.
I almost forgot to mention our debts, which consist of several thousand lei. That is yet the best thing a farmer has! He can satiate himself from nothing better than debts! Nothing else satisfies the human being. The words in a song say the more a person owns the more he wants to own. His complaints never stop, but once a person has several thousands of debt then he tells himself that now it is enough! Just like a certain gentleman in Fox Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Egidius Volk will travel to Kischinev tomorrow to pick up his passport. He is planning to leave from here before Easter if he gets his passport tomorrow, or if there is nothing else to keep him from his departure.
Two weeks ago our young soldiers were drafted. They are the following people: Jakob, son of Thomas Kopp; Michael, son of Philipp Kopp; Zelestinus, son of Heinrich Krams; Kaspar, son of Andreas Gross; Elias, son of Jakob Moldenhauer; Johannes, son of Joseph Gross and Isidor Blotski.
I am greeting Joseph Mueller, my old mother and my siblings in Elardee, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Zachaeus Kopp